Just sold my m17xR1 any rumors out there on AW sandy bridge

Got a good deal and sold my m17x r1 for 2850. Im back on my super old 4.0ghz pentium 4 extreme 1 gig ram 256 meg geforce 6800. It suck so much it stutters on 1080p playback but it can play 720p. 4.0ghz sounds fast but trust me its not really. It's only 6 months till sandy bridge and i'd be kicking myself if i bought another laptop now when sandy bridge is supposed to be so awesome. Any rumors out there on any specs the m15x and m17x will have on sandy bridge. My #1 hope is a nice improvement in battery life which sandy briidge says is one of its main features.

 

Expect lots of new Sandy Bridge systems released during CES in January.

 

the problem isn't the processors in these laptops, it's the 50-100W+ TDP gpus. If anything I would expect battery performance to be worse by the time sandy bridge comes out. Unless dell shoves a bigger battery in them, and they're already pretty massive to begin with.

yup, however, if the m17x's record says anything, it's that new technology never works right, or dell manages to screw it up at the last second.

6 months is a long time for something to go wrong/get delayed. It's also a long time for new releases. In either case, good luck on the waiting thing! hehe

 

Remember that AW models and even Clevo's lag the introduction of a new chipset by a few months usually. Simple machines will get the new chipset right away, but the more complexly engineered gaming laptops take a bit of time to incorporate these things. Case in point the R2 came out several months after the introduction of the I7.

So yes probably January for the new Sandy Bridge, but probably no new M17x until May '11 or so I'd guess, maybe June and the tradeshows...

 

M15x came out quickly after i7 was introduced.

 

the reason i say sandy bridge should have more battery life is i believe graphics switching will be implemented on almost every sandy bridge laptop. I'm hoping the m15x or m17x will have graphics switching with sandy bridge. Sandy bridge cpu's are supposed to have like that new like double performance seires 6 integrated gpu

 

You can buy that tech now but it's non-existent in gaming systems. Not so sure it will be implemented in the Sandy Bridge based gaming systems.

 

yea i mean it should be more widespread on sandy bridge

 

the 6xx series I7 processors have integrated GPUs, and they're not even close to being widespread.

 

The technology will be improved eventually but the real question is will it be here in 6 months. If you have something to hold you over until then, then you can afford to wait.

 

There is also the philosophy that if you wait 6+ months for something to be released, something better will be scheduled for release just a few months later, causing a never ending loop of waiting, or just biting the bullet & getting one step down for the best currently available so you are not paying the extremely high price of the "latest & greatest" component.

Processors are a perfect example. Look at the M17X-R2's $540 US price difference between the i7-820QM & i7-920XM series mobile processors for such a small jump in speed (a difference of 270mhz/140mhz turbo). Even worse when we all know the i7-x40 series are already out in other model lines.

 

well im not gonna wait for ivy bridge thats like 1.5 years atleast, sandy bridge is more then just a small bump of an upgrade it's a major node. I have a 4.0ghz pentium 4 extreme 1 gig ram desktop to tide me over while i wait. I was using it as just a seedbox for torrents. It's not perfect but it runs all my apps just not all my games but i guess i can game on ps3 in the mean time. Even if the sandy bridge m15x or m17x doesn;t graphic switch it'll still be a well worth while wait as sandy bridge is alot more then just a small mhz bump in performance its worth the wait. If I didn't have this desktop id prolly have to buy now. I just have a strong feeling that sandy bridge notebooks are going to have a much larger widespread use of the new 6 series integrated gpu's. As time goes by people will be expecting switchable graphics in every single notebook brought to market. I can almost 100% guarantee sandybridge notebooks will have a much higher percentage of them include graphics switching. the question is will alienwares larger notebooks be in that percentage. Even if not there are external 120whr battery packs to extend my up time up to 4 hours which is what i need.

Intel stated sandybridges fastest cpu will be 20% faster then core i7's fastest cpu while using less power so even without switchable graphics that is a huge uprade compared to the tiny upgrades they are doing now. A platform upgrade vs a processor series upgrade is 2 totally different things.

 

I really wouldn't be concerned about sand bridge,and Intel has a tendency to exaggerate their releases anyway. Core 2 processors are still way more efficient then products today need, and they will be for a long time, so Clarksfield and Arrendale will be usefull for good long time too . If you look at the data that's available now, Sand bridge cpu's still suck the same 45W TDP that i7's to today, they come with the same amount of cache, the same amount of cores with HT, the same Dual Channel DDR1333 memory controller, and now you'll be forced to have an IGP on the die. A clock speed increase because of the die reduction and a different socket are the major points so far, they re-worked it so the core's communicate a bit better as well as some slightly better turbo-boost functionality. However, None of these are really 'revolutionary', rather more like 'evolutionary'. By the time Sand bridge comes out, we might have another clock speed update for Clarksfield anyway.

If you're planning on buying a M17x in December, yeah, wait for it. Otherwise I would have just kept the R1 imo.

 

Intel Offers Peek at Working Sandy Bridge PC

Well look at this

 

sandybridge
cpu is more power efficient with about 10-50% improvement clock to clock compare + has AVX instruction set (Win7 SP1 will have AVX support)

igp is supposedly much much better than the current one* . they gave a demo with sadnybridge igp running a game vs a "mid range gfx card" in Computex Taiwan and people couldn't tell which one is igp and which one was a discrete card.

chipset
will have Sata2,Widi,Bluetooth (?) all integrated on the chipset.. possibly ligtpeak too

then there is also the AMD fusion to reckon with.

but all this is atleast 8-12 months away. so i think its a bit too long to wait

 

no mass production of sandy bridge starts end 2010 products will appear q1 2011

 

exactly.. absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for an archetype refresh. Nehalem at least had turbo-boost and brought back HT. Sand Bridge adds an IGP which will give us a bit longer battery life, and perform about the same,except with faster clock speeds, which doesn't matter much since Clarksfield has turbo-boost. Don't get me wrong, it is a noticeable improvement, but an improvement in where exactly?

 

I am too hesitating in waiting 6 months but I am not sure I will as everytime AW or Dell comes out with a new product it is broken for months before updates comes.

I may just get the i7, XF5870 once it is fixed... Hopefully that will be next month at most.

 

exactly, I wonder what they'll conjure up when they release a sand bridge platform.

 

meh, i got a desktop that runs 95% of what i use. I can afford to wait for sandy bridge. And I would never ever get clarksfield they super drain the battery and are almost pointless as nothing uses the extra cores. If I was to get something now I would get a i5-540, 5730, ssd, 1600 x 900 and save myself 40 watts or more under load and stretch my 9 cell battery time to 4 hours while still being able to play all the games i need to mainly starcraft 2 is all i play as well as a game called tibia which is just a 2d mmorpg as well as older games like age of empires heroes of might and magic. Why would I get super power hungry quad cores and beefed up graphics cards when i can run evrything i need too and save a ton of watts and get more battery life and run a ton cooler.